Tag: hunter-gatherer

TBT^16: Rebuilding Civilization: The Hunter-Gatherer

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Yours portly is teaching World History for the second consecutive year (before last school year, the last time I’d taught the course was way back in the 2011-2012 school year, although I also taught the close cousin of World History, Western Civilization, at the local technical college more recently), and I love these early weeks of the course, as we talk about early civilizations and how they arose.  The short answer is “agriculture.”

That always gets me thinking about this post from 2021 about how remote hunter-gatherer tribes would survive the collapse of civilization—because they lack it entirely.

It occurred to me that these remote peoples likely would not be the ones “rebuilding civilization.”  Having not developed it in the first place, and seemingly unlikely to do so within any reasonable timeframe (because over the course of 6000 years of human civilization, they have never developed it), it seems like the best hope for civilization would, ironically, be the very peoples that destroyed it in the first place.

We see this pattern play out throughout history.  The people living in the remnants of the Roman Empire rebuilt—however slowly—a distinctly European civilization.  That’s not even mentioning the Eastern European or “Byzantine” Empire, which endured until 1453.  We often forget that only half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the first place.

But I digress.  I am a big believer in civilization, warts and all.

With that, here is 29 August 2024’s “TBT^4: Rebuilding Civilization: The Hunter-Gatherer“:

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TBT^4: Rebuilding Civilization: The Hunter-Gatherer

The Portly Politico6 Comments

As readers are doubtlessly tired of hearing, I am teaching World History this year for the first time in over a decade.  So far it’s been hugely fun, as we have been studying the earliest humans and how people transitioned from the hunter-gathering lifestyle of the Paleolithic Age to the settled agricultural lifestyle of the Neolithic Age.  With agriculture came cities and, ultimately, civilization.

There’s been a subtle-but-noticeable trend of late that idolizes the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.  Wouldn’t it be great to spend a few hours gathering food each day, then lounging by the campfire with your kinsmen and relaxing?  Well, yes, if you’re in an area of great abundance, that wouldn’t be bad, but you’re also living with massive food insecurity all the time.

One telling graph in my students’ World History textbooks shows the population of the world prior to the rise of agriculture, and the population afterwards.  The transition is dramatic:  while the global population hovered around just a few hundred thousand people for millennia, the global population shot up to roughly ninety million people in the first 5000 years following the advent of agriculture.  The graph is a real hockey stick.

We definitely have made sacrifices for civilization, and I think Western Civilization has particularly grown quite sick.  Crowding a bunch of people into tightly-packed cities is probably not good for our mental health.  Some people need to live on forty acres in the middle of nowhere.  I suspect that most of us need considerably less space, but there’s something dehumanizing about cramming people into shoebox apartments stacked one atop the other.  We’re probably also not meant to destroy our minds and bodies on soul-sucking corporate work for a dozen hours a day, either.

But even with these drawbacks, civilization breeds life.  And the struggles inherent in maintaining a civilization create the greatest art and literature the world has ever known.

My argument for civilization will always boil down to this idea:  the civilization that produced Bach is a civilization worth preserving.

With that here is 24 August 2024’s “TBT^2: Rebuilding Civilization: The Hunter-Gatherer“:

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TBT^2: Rebuilding Civilization: The Hunter-Gatherer

The Portly Politico4 Comments

It’s interesting to come back to the question of the value of civilization from time to time.  For what it’s worth, I think civilization is definitely worth maintaining, even with the inevitable social ills that come with it.  Better to live a life abundant in not just material well-being, but also with opportunities for self-improvement and finer pursuits, like literature and art, than to be scrounging around for every meal.

Of course, the few remaining peoples that live the hunter-gatherer life would disagree—if they were even capable of conceiving of a different lifestyle.  As difficult as it is for us in the “civilized” world to imagine the hunter-gatherer’s life, how much more difficult must it for be for the hunter-gatherer to conceive of our life?

I doubt either one would trade places with the other, which is what makes the situation so intriguing.  Both ways of life have merits and pitfalls.  Beyond that, that human beings could live such vastly different lives is a testament to the incredible diversity of our own species.  It’s fascinating to consider that we have, essentially, living ancestors in the world today, people who live largely as all humans did in the remotest past of our time on this planet.

All interesting, conceptual things to consider.  Which life would you choose?

With that, here is 18 August 2022’s “TBT: Rebuilding Civilization: The Hunter-Gatherer“:

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TBT: Rebuilding Civilization: The Hunter-Gatherer

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Yours portly is back at school, which always gets me thinking about the future of our civilization.  Children are the future, allegedly, and the Bible pretty much says that if you’re a bad teacher who leads kids astray, you’re going to Hell—yikes!  In short, there’s a big responsibility to do the job well, and not to screw up the kids, since they’ll be running things in thirty or forty years or so.

Of course, our mode of living is quite different from the hunter-gatherers of yore—and those of today.  Their lives are substantially different from our own, to the point they’d likely survive whatever catastrophic event might destroy the rest of us here in the “civilized” world.

Still, for all the problems that come with civilization, I rather like it.  Air-conditioning and Hot Pockets are pretty nice luxuries, and I like knowing I can get a pizza in thirty minutes if I really want one.  The only hunting I have to do is hunting for a coupon; the only gathering is picking my figs (and my neighbor mostly does that).

Nevertheless, we’d all do well to take a page from the hunter-gatherer’s playbook and appreciate the simple things in life—and maybe work a few less hours each day.  Well, maybe.

With that, here is 25 August 2021’s “Rebuilding Civilization: The Hunter-Gatherer“:

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Lazy Sunday CXXVIII: Civilization

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Civilization seems to be taking it on the chin lately, with anti-civilizational forces in various forms scoring victories against the civilized world.  The Taliban’s rapid reconquista of Afghanistan following America’s hasty, disorganized withdrawal suggests that a group of motivated cavemen can topple a well-trained, well-equipped, but artificial regime in a brisk weekend.

Within the gates of the civilized world, we’re going in a decidedly Babylonian route, indulging in wildly hedonistic displays of decadence, while ignoring the fundamentals that keep civilization going.  Even the gates are largely symbolic, as we’re allowing in every paleontological throwback, handing them government bennies and free housing in the process.

All that said, I think civilization is worth preserving.  I’ll write about that in a future post.  For now, here are some of my past scribblings on the topic for this mildly gloomy edition of Lazy Sunday:

  • “Civilization is Worth It” – Here is my initial case for civilization.  I think this line sums it up best:  “Ultimately, I’d much rather live in a world that produced J.S. Bach than a Stone Age pit full of atonal grunting.  It says something about the state of our civilization that the atonal grunts are back in vogue.”
  • “What is Civilization” – This post was based on a discussion between Milo Yiannopoulos and “groypers” Steven Franssen and Vincent James.  The groypers argued that folks should abandon the cities and head to the country.  Milo argued that cities are the heart of civilization, and should be defended.  Both sides make compelling points, though I tend to side with Franssen and James on this one.
  • “Rebuilding Civilization: The Hunter-Gatherer” – This post was inspired by an essay by Stuart Wavell entitled “The next civilisation.”  Wavell suggests that in the event of a cataclysmic, apocalyptic-level event, the isolated hunter-gatherers would be the ones to carry on the torch of humanity.

Well, there’s your dose of civilizational analysis for this weekend.  Let’s all do our part to maintain the things that make civilization worth the effort.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

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Rebuilding Civilization: The Hunter-Gatherer

The Portly Politico23 Comments

Thanks to Audre Myers of Nebraska Energy Observer I have a new commenter on the blog, 39 Pontiac Dream, a proper English gent of the old school (or so I gather).  He very kindly shared some links with me from The Conservative Woman (or TWC as it is styled on its website), a site both Audre and Neo have recommended to me many times.  One of those links was to an intriguing piece by Stuart Wavell, “The next civilisation.”

Our culture has an obsession with apocalyptic scenarios:  massive plagues (a bit too relevant at the moment); zombie uprisings (always a popular one); massive meteor impacts (a bit retro—a favorite of the 1990s).  Perhaps it’s a sign of a moribund and decadent culture that we fantasize about most of human life ending and starting the whole thing over from scratch.

When we indulge in these celluloid and literary fantasies, I suspect the inherent assumption is similar to those who want to restore absolute monarchies:  we assume that we will survive the collapse, just as the would-be monarchists assume they will be king (or at least some important member of the nobility).

Chances are, most of us (yours portly included) would die quite quickly, either from the cataclysm itself, or from the bands of marauding raiders that would inevitably rise up in the wake of such a collapse.  If those didn’t get us, it would be starvation, disease, or our own inability to assess danger that would do us in.

Wavell makes a similar point, with an interesting caveat:  while those of us softened and doughy by the abundance of civilization would find ourselves in the pickle brine, the isolated, self-sufficient hunter-gatherers of the world—and they are still out there!—would be just fine, as they have been for millennia.

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